Stephen B. Morton Associated Press U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell (right) is led by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuge manager Kimberly Hayes on a tour of the American wood stork nesting area at the Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge in Townsend, Ga., on Thursday.

Stephen B. Morton Associated Press A wood stork lands on a branch during a tour by U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell of the Harris Neck Wildlife Refuge Thursday. Jewell announced the wood stork's status has been upgraded from endangered to threatened.

Hundreds of adult wood storks gather in the tops of trees at the Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge on Thursday.

TOWNSEND | Fourteen years after it was predicted to have become extinct, the American wood stork was upgraded to a threatened species from the endangered status it has held for 30 years, the secretary of the Interior said Thursday.

With wood storks flying overhead, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell made the announcement at Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge, which now has 400 nesting pairs at its Woody Pond rookery.

“It’s no longer at risk of extinction, and it’s on its way to recovery,’’ Jewell said of the only stork species in the wild in the U.S. The birds, with their bald dark gray heads, stand about 4 feet tall and their wingspans in flight approach 5 feet.

“The down-listing of the work stork from endangered to threatened demonstrates how the Endangered Species Act can be an effective tool to protect and recover imperiled wildlife from the brink of extinction,’’ Jewell said.

“It’s an act that people like to pummel,’’ Jewell said, ‘‘but I want to tell you, it works.”

Wildlife listed as threatened receive essentially the same protection as those listed as endangered.

At its low point, when the work stork population was concentrated in South Florida, Georgia was down to only four nesting pairs.

Billy Brooks, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Recovery coordinator for Georgia, said he was proud of the work his colleagues and partners are doing. Brooks praised John Robinette, the retired biologist for the Savannah National Wildlife Refuge complex that includes Harris Neck.

It was Robinette who came up with idea of erecting poles in Woody Pond with artificial nesting platforms over water where the wood storks could build nests, lay eggs and raise their young. In the 1990s, cypress trees were planted along the edges of the pond and, once the trees matured, the wood storks have moved to those — which Jewell called better real estate — and left the artificial platforms to other birds.

Brooks said the work of improving habitat has gone on in a lot of places, which allowed the wood storks to spread out and thrive.

At one time, the entire population had dropped to less than 2,700 nesting pairs only in Florida. Now the three-year average since 2004 has ranged from 7,086 to 10,146, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said. That’s enough to down-list wood storks from endangered, but not enough to remove them from the list entirely. The current recovery plan requires a five-year average of 10,000 nesting pairs.

Not everyone was happy with Jewell’s announcement. One group said it was too early and another said it was too late.

The Audubon Society, while applauding the stork’s resurgence, said it fears the government should have done more research before approving the status upgrade. Wood storks still struggle in parts of the Everglades where they once thrived, and there are concerns that states where the birds have moved lack regulatory protection for wetlands, said Brad Cornell, an Audubon Society policy advocate.

“We believe the Fish and Wildlife Service is really premature in any reclassification,” Cornell said. “There are too many gaps in the vital science on wood storks and a lack of long-term habitat protections to sustain [their] recovery.”

Others say the government dragged its feet on the decision. The Florida Homebuilders Association and the Pacific Legal Foundation, which advocates for private property rights, have been pressing the government to change the bird’s status since winning a court-ordered scientific review in 2007. The government gave notice in December 2012 of intent to upgrade the stork to a threatened species. Its final decision took another year and a half.